


In the Dark Hours

by tetsubinatu



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 09:08:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1092126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tetsubinatu/pseuds/tetsubinatu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The night is full of people who should be sleeping.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Dark Hours

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nmarlow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nmarlow/gifts).



> My thanks to fortesomniare for her timely assistance when I was at the end of my resources. You're a treasure, Som!

Sometimes Dot woke up in the wee small hours of the morning. Downstairs, in his cosy room, Mr Butler would be snoring with a sawing noise that reminded Dot of her Uncle Tim, when he visited from Gippsland sometimes. Upstairs, Dot's redoubtable mistress would be sleeping the sleep of a woman with a conscience as clear as springwater.

It was Dot whose conscience was not clear. In the daylight she might be certain of her own virtue, but when the little carriage clock in the hall chimed three, Father Grogan's accusing image would rise to ask her if she was being seduced from the good path.

Oh, but: _Hugh_! He was such a good man! He would never ask her to stray from the path of her conscience.

Except by being what he was, her conscience whispered unwillingly: Protestant.

(Why did he have to be born Protestant?)

She had rejected his offer to convert with an instinctive recoil. He spoke so lovingly of his mother, wanting her to take pride in his achievements, and Dot would never wish to cause the sort of trouble that his conversion to Catholicism would bring. (It warmed her heart that he had offered. He must truly love her to offer)

But Father Grogan would not approve of her rejection of the offer either. She could never let him know that she had refused to bring Hugh into the True Faith. She felt sick at the thought.

And there was the Inspector, too. A Divorced Man! Dot felt guilty even thinking it of such a good person, but Divorce! She shuddered. No, Father Grogan would not approve of Inspector Robinson, however nice he was.

And finally, of course, there was Miss Fisher. She didn't have to imagine anything about what Father Grogan would say about Miss Fisher. He had made his opinion perfectly clear. Her only virtue was in her good intentions, and everyone knew where they led.

Dot winced and got out of bed. Outside her window the picanniny dawn was waking the birds. Miss Fisher would not be up for hours, but Dot needed to drive the miseries away, as her Mum would say.

Cocoa in the kitchen, and the mending, then. Before she started thinking of all the things Mum didn't know about her current life. It cast a shadow on her visits home, the guilty knowledge of those lies of omission. Naturally she could never tell Mum about Phryne's lovers and her own complicity in treating them as perfectly nice people when clearly some of them _were not_. But there were other, murkier things she couldn't tell her either: about the way silks against her skin made her feel, for example, or the feeling of joy that rose in her at taking action - sometimes duplicitous and violent action - against an evildoer. About the way she didn't want to get married (just yet) and give up her own strength and power (Dot blushed at the thought) for the life of a good wife and mother - not even with Hugh.

About the way Miss Fisher sometimes made her feel: like she could do anything, like she was special. Not just wife-and-mother special, but...

She would never want to _be_ Miss Fisher. She wasn't as clever or as brave as her; she didn't want any lovers except Hugh or a big house with servants. (Maybe the clothes, a little bit, but what woman wouldn't adore Miss Fisher's clothes?)

It was just that Miss Phryne saw a Dot that no-one before had ever suspected, not even Dot. And she loved that Dot in all her imperfections - all the bad, rebellious parts of her, all the scared parts and brave parts. She asked more of Dot than anyone else ever would have, stretched her beyond all reasonable limits - but each time, Dot found that she was up the challenge, that she was braver and stronger, more capable than she had ever dreamed.

The cocoa was warming, and the heat of it was driving away her collywobbles. She'd finished darning the last stocking in her mending basket and Mr Butler's alarm would start its horrible, shrill clatter at any moment. Dot washed her cup and spoon and headed back to her lovely, comfortable bed.

Perhaps she would be able to catch a little more sleep. Suddenly she was very tired.

* ** *** ** *

 

Sometimes, in the still quiet after the last roistering bright young things had finally gone to sleep and before the milkman came clop-clopping and clattering down the street, Mr Butler would lie alone in his bed and wonder how it had come to this.

There had been a Mrs Butler once. And there had been a baby Butler, if only for a very short while. And yet here he was, alone, without a single soul to call him Toby or see him in his braces.

Miss Fisher valued him highly - he had no doubt of that! The salary she paid him should have been ample evidence in any case, but it was the way she invaded his kitchen and listened - actually listened - to him that was most eloquent of her regard.

He liked to think that he was valued by young Dorothy as well. She never spoke of her own father and he could not tell if that was because he was deceased or otherwise absent, or simply due to some lack of warm feeling between them. She had certainly taken Toby's advice in the matter of the church fair, though, and he thought that she might come again to him if she had further difficulties.

But still, not one of the grand plans young Tobias Butler had made for his future had ended with him alone in a servant's bed at his age.

His Ma and Da had been so proud of him. Admittedly, his Da did not show his pride to young Toby's face, but Toby knew. His quick intelligence led his Ma to predict great things for her eldest. He might have become a teacher, or risen through the ranks of government service.

If he hadn't discovered the joys of gambling and drinking, and proceeded to waste every opportunity offered to him, that is. Until he had fallen back on the family trade, so to speak, and gone into service.

Butler by name, butler by nature, his father had joked. "Not for me!" young Toby had thought. "Slave to another man's whims, day and night; not me, never..."

And yet here he was. Ma and Da were long gone, as were Aurelia and the baby, and, well: he may have made a mess of his life but he was _good_ at his job, no-one could deny that. And he liked it.

He _liked_ it. He was good at it and he liked it. He was appreciated and valued by his eccentric employer and the motley group of misfits she had collected in her train. He had a place where he fit. 

It may not have been Ma's dream for him, or young Toby's dream for himself, but he was, in his own way, happy. 

Defiantly, Mr Butler turned over and went back to sleep. 

__

____

* ** *** ** *

At the end of a long shift, when he'd locked up the last miscreant and finished his paperwork (or possibly just shoved it into a drawer out of sight) Inspector John Robinson, known to all and sundry as Jack, would sometimes retire at last to his welcoming bed and find himself unable to sleep.

It wasn't a wide, polished bed, like his marital one had been, and the mattress had not settled - despite the best efforts of their maidservant and bootboy to turn it regularly - into two separate dips either side of the hill of marital discord. He had no maidservant, now, nor a bootboy, for that matter. They had gone with Rosie. It had been her money in the first place that hired them, and he certainly had no need for them as a single man.

His new mattress was narrower and firm, and it was beginning to develop a worn patch on the left side. Habit. The whole bed was his but still he clung to the left edge.

Rosie was gone, and at last he was beginning to accept that theirs had never been destined to be a long, happy marriage such as he had aspired to. They had been ill-matched.

Oh, he had the intelligence and ambition she sought, but his ambition was not directed towards acquiring material goods or even power. He would never enjoy hobnobbing with the elite and quaffing their champagne. It was the thrill of the chase, he sought, and the satisfaction of catching some bastard that had caused pain and loss to other people - and here was the part she _really_ didn't understand - _whatever_ the status of the victim.

Jack had loved her, and he had married her thinking that their principles and ambitions were complementary. Which only worked until the first time he failed to show up for a 'very important' party because of the death of an insignificant clerical worker. The writing had been on the wall from that moment, though they had fought and reconciled again and again until they were too exhausted to continue.

He had never thought to be divorced. And it was in these dark hours that he wondered if he had been as inflexible and unreasonable as Rosie had said, screamed, wept. Perhaps he was intrinsically unsuited to marriage, or any permanent relationship.

He fell asleep with a frown creasing the space between his eyebrows, but sleep eased it from him, leaving his face peaceful at last.

* ** *** ** *

 

Phryne's cool green satin sheets were soft against her face. She smiled a little, but didn't wake.

**Author's Note:**

> Mr Butler in the books is happily married so I diverged his history from TV's Mr Butler by having his wife die young.


End file.
